The chances of Mali great Seydou Keita and Cote d’Ivoire flying winger Gervinho winning the Italian Serie A title for the first time are withering after they failed to close the nine-point gap on leaders Juventus on Monday night.
Both featured as the two sides played out a 1-1 draw in Rome on Monday night, with vice captain Keita rescuing a point for the Romans with a 78th minute header.
Roma played their best football when they were reduced to ten men in the 62nd minute and Keita believes that if they want to win the Scudetto – with 13 games to go – they need more belief to be at their best for all 90 minutes.
“We woke up too late, because after the red card we had to work twice as hard,” Keita told Sky Sport Italia.
“We needed to win today, we drew and it isn’t enough. Juve are a great team and we cannot think of dominating them for 90 minutes.
“However, we should’ve played the whole game the way we did in the last 20 minutes. If we had always played like this, we wouldn’t be nine points behind Juve either.”
On his part AFCON 2015 winner Gervinho, usually Roma’s most dangerous player going forward, said he and his teammates were denied spaces to operate by the Turin giants.
“We were only able to find spaces at the end, when Juventus became a little stretched out. In order to attack, you need spaces,” Gervinho told Roma TV.
“We were dangerous at the end when we poured forward with headers from Manolas and Keita, but it’s also fair to say Buffon had a relatively quiet night,” added the Ivoirian who says he is back to full fitness after his country’s AFCON triumph.
– Story by Ghana/Joy Sports/Gary Al-Smith
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